


leave your quiet sighing

by saintofbeasts



Category: Mushishi
Genre: Author tried, Gen, Ghost family, storytelling to communicate feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintofbeasts/pseuds/saintofbeasts
Summary: Shinra is still learning how to live with Renzu after Ginko leaves; Renzu tells a story to try to help him understand.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [higuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/higuchi/gifts).



The snowfall itself is quiet. It muffles the sounds of the woods, the animals, the birds. The insect hum has been gone for over a month when the first snow falls overnight. 

Shinra doesn’t care for the quiet of winter.

Now there is this young spirit version of the woman who raised him, though, and it’s like stubbing his toe on an unfamiliar stoop. Renzu sounds something like his grandmother, quick witted and short tempered, but she is so young – as young as Shinra himself – and he cannot reconcile the quiet echoing halls of his once haunted home to her nosy, blunt curiosity.

The dusk hangs this evening, darkening slate clouds and heavy snow laden branches, the wind moaning through the trees as yet more snow falls. Shinra shivers and piles the kindling he’s gathered next to his door. The kettle he set out onto the porch this morning, he fills with snow. He shoves the door open, placing the kettle inside, and quickly kicks off his geta to leave them out on the porch. He ducks in and wraps himself tightly into a cocoon of blankets, sliding the door shut on the cold wind. 

“I hope you’re ready to stay here for some time,” says Renzu, translucent and delicate in her summer clothes. “It seems like the storm will keep us here for days, even once the snow lets up.” She is shimmering, staring out into the storm, warm as only ghosts and spirits can be. 

Shinra places the kettle on the stove that doubles as his heater in the winter months.  
“I should have the food I need,” he says. It’s hard to keep the note of annoyance out of his voice. He’d survived for a few years without her, without the mushi master – with no company but the mushi he drew. He knew how to go down to the village when he needed. He knew how to preserve the fruits and vegetables from the garden, how to fish the river, how to write with his right hand to avoid unseemly mushi infestations. He knew how to be alone, because of her, or half of her at least.

“Don’t snap at me,” she sniffs, drawing her knees up to her chest. “I won’t care if there’s no food or warmth in three days.”

“That’s not true, Renzu,” he says with a little sigh. “You wouldn’t stay here with me if you didn’t care.” She has no quick response, and he tries to let the tension seep from his shoulders as he warms up in the small room. 

“I will tell you a story.” Shinra opens his eyes again to look over at the mushi ghost of his dead grandmother. She’s still staring out into the falling snow, a small smile turning up the corners of her mouth. “It’s customary to tell stories when we’re trapped in a storm like this, isn’t it?”

“That is the custom that you taught me,” he says, dry as a bone. The thought, though! The idea of telling stories to someone who can understand them, the idea of listening to another voice telling them – even if the Renzu spirit would just tell the same stories his grandmother told – is compelling. “Do you want to start or should I?”

Renzu turns towards him, and the glow from the stove and the lamp cast strange shadows, as though the light goes through her and stops on her. “I will start,” she says imperiously. She lifts her hand like she is painting the story with it as she begins.

“There was,” she says, “once a man, neither poor nor rich. He was a farmer and his house was small, but dry. He had enough land to feed himself and grow a little extra for the market. He was kind, but quiet, and his family was no longer with him.

“He was alone. “ She looks Shinra in the eye. “Like us.”

Like me, not you, he thinks, and checks the water to keep from saying it out loud. 

“He heard a commotion one morning outside his door, and came outside to find a snow white crane bleeding from an arrow wound in the wing. He carefully brought the crane inside his small home and wrapped the wing in bandages. He fed it half of the rice and fish he’d set aside for his breakfast, ate the other half, and left it there to return to the fields. At least if it died, he thought, it would die in shelter, with food and safety.”

Shinra knows this story, but the bitterness he’s felt about the company is fading in the darkening room. It’s soothing to hear the rise and fall of Renzu’s voice, familiar words and a familiar story, and his eyes close slowly to allow the pictures she’s painting to form in his mind.

“When he came home from the fields that day, there was no crane waiting for him. There was, however, a beautiful young woman. Her skin was pale and smooth, her hair was dark and long, and her arm was held close to the chest in a sling.” Renzu pauses again, and Shinra looks over at her. Her face looks – pained, lost. “He was a simple man, but never stupid. He knew that she could not be what she seemed, but he greeted her all the same and asked if she was in need of help. She was shy and stuttering as she explained that she had no family near, she needed a place to stay, and could he kindly help her? By the turning of the leaves, they were married.”

Shinra quietly lifts the hot water from the stove and pours it over carefully measured scoops of tea. The smoky scent of pu-erh rises into the air with steam, and he places the cup on the mat, next to the crouched mushi girl. She nods thanks and continues.

“They were happy enough, but times were hard. It was a dry summer, and the harvest was enough for one, not two. Hunting was lean, and the woman did not often eat meat, and never fowl. As the days grew shorter, she asked for a very simple loom from him. He hated to deny her, so he spent what little silver saved he had on a loom. The first thing she did was to make a rough divider with paper and bamboo, placing it between her loom and their bed. She looked him in the eye when she said, ‘Do not look. If you love me, you cannot see me weave.’ He nodded, lips tight, and left their small house for her to weave.

“She had never requested yarn or thread to make her cloth. Nevertheless, as he prepared for the winter, she began weaving beautiful swathes of cloth, silken, finer than the emperor’s clothing. He asked no questions. They ate their simple, meager meals and he simply spoke with her about the weather, the farm, plans for the winter.

“Finally, when there were several bolts of fabric, she spoke to him. ‘I made these for you,’ she said. ‘So that you can sell them down in town.’ The man looked at his wife and saw her truly, still beautiful, but hollowing. The circles under her eyes were darker, and her beautiful black hair was dull.” Renzu stops, at this point, absently running a fingertip around the rim of the cup.

“You don’t have to keep going,” says Shinra, warming his hands against his own cup. He knows he sounds cold, so he tries again. “I know how it ends.” 

“How it ends isn’t the point, Shinra,” she says. She moves across the mat to sit next to him. It feels like static and the chill of winter on his arm when she brushes her hand across it. The look on her face is serious. “He took the cloth down to the market and sold it, bought them food for the winter, coal, thick blankets. They were happy again for a time, though she never regained that health.” Renzu lets out a breath that disturbs the steam rising in the air in front of Shinra. He thinks, absurdly, of the mushishi’s strange cigarettes and the smoke that followed his drawings around the room. 

“I know that she’s the crane,” he says. I know that you are a spirit, he does not need to say. “I know that the husband could not stop his curiosity and he saw her weaving her feathers and blood into silk. I know that she flew away after.”

“That isn’t the point,” Renzu repeats. She looks into his eyes again and he can see in this thin young wisp the bones of his grandmother, the intense gaze the same, the flat line of her mouth lacking the wrinkles and gravity he grew up with. “The point is that he knew and he loved her the same. The point is that she never hid what she was.” She grasps at the tea cup, fingers solid enough to lift it, slowly, to her insubstantial mouth. “The point is that he could not bear to see her use herself to make the cloth and so he pushed the screen aside to try to save his wife. And in trying to hold onto the thing he held so dear, he lost her.”

Shinra has nothing to say to this. He slowly sips from his own cup, smoky smooth and warm on his sore throat.

“I do not think my other self was right to keep you away from your work,” she says quietly. “I think that you are now the age I was when she and I split apart. It is very difficult to make a home with just one person.” They both sat silent for a long time, as he considered what she said and the years of solitude in his old mountain home and the strange, ethereal nature of her. He thinks of how she is like his grandmother and how she is not. He thinks of the small slips of life sliding off of paper, of the people he’s never met, of the cities Ginko and other travellers have told him about.

He brings his attention back to the warm room, safe, with company who speaks and good tea. He stretches his hand out to gently touch hers, the strange static cool of it. “It’s a good thing, then, that Ginko gave you a way to stick around then, isn’t it?” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, Higuchi! Thank you for being my first Yuletide! When I saw that you wanted something with Shinra and Ginko, I thought it would be a good opportunity to explore something I thought about from the first time I watched the episode: it's got to be really difficult to go from barely seeing anyone to Ginko staying with him to suddenly living with Renzu. The story that Renzu tells is an adaptation of [Tsuru no Ongaeshi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuru_no_Ongaeshi). I attempted to keep it in tune with the general tone and indistinct time setting of the show; please forgive any mistakes regarding Japanese housing setup and heating during the Edo period. ^^; I hope that you enjoy the story, and happy Yule!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] leave your quiet sighing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12539120) by [Chestnut_filly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_filly/pseuds/Chestnut_filly)




End file.
